The distrust for a standing army, was likely largely inherited from the English colonists, some of who might be considered exiles, persecuted in Europe (e.g. puritans and the Quakers). This was roughly the era of the English civil war and restoration of Charles II. Charles the second very notably used a standing army (notably made up of Irish catholics), which was seen by the vast majority of English, native protestants and Anglicans, as attempting to restore Catholicism and possibly eventually absolute monarchy, upon the country. Catholicism was seen as a thin wedge of eventual subservience and prostration beneath French power and prestige. Charles II recieved a great deal of direct but secret financial support from the French crown for his projects. When Charles II started cannibalizing his own power base of cavaliers and their traditional rights and privileges he sewed the seeds of his own destruction. Thus you got the fear of a standing army, which was enshrined in the Bill of Rights 1689
Which was sort of enshrined in the constitution by giving the control of paying the army to congress not the president who only retained largely symbolic command. Also there was the unpleasant experience of various armies billeting and roving around north america to keep it fresh.
So how then do you get from there to now?
If you believe Adam Smith, it's the sign of a modernizing society, which was surely a factor in 16th-19th century America. Not the least reason seems to be that maybe a landed aristocracy fears a standing army more than a business class using an deepening pool of urban labor, an army marching on its stomach and so forth.
Fighting the British for independence (again with French financial aid, and also Spanish) required a skilled professional army. This need continued with Westward and Southwestward expansion. Notably milestones in this process were likely the civil war, and the Mexican American war which ensured a strong central government with similarly federalized military institutions instead of distributed state militias and armies
Once all internal unrest was quelled and aborigines for the most part displaced or exterminated, the temptation for foreign adventures and spoils was probably impossible to resist. It was all the rage for the then globally dominant European powers. They began to look south toward toward wresting away control of colonies from a weakening Spanish Empire. It's no coincidence this was a huge period of economic and demographic expansion for America. Notable in this period include the annexing of Hawaii, the Phillipine american war, and Spanish American war and many more minor interventions.
A the start of the Great War, the US was maybe comparable in power to the great European powers, but by the end of the Great Patriotic War, it had eclipsed them all. Notable events here might be the treaty of London whereby Britain effectively abandoned any pretense of competing for global naval superiority to the US, with the London Naval Treaty of 1930, and The Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. If for much of its history the armed forces has acted as the enforcers its business class, then it should perhaps be expected as the US became expanded, developped and became richer, it's armed forces would also increase correspondingly.
As for Bills, debates in congress, documentary evidence of changes in political social attitudes and so forth, you'll have to rely on someone more expert and enlightened.